Unexpected own goal
Thank you for reporting on the disgraceful issue of Australia being erased from the report on how Unesco World Heritage sites are threatened by climate change (3 June). Our major Unesco site is, of course, the Great Barrier Reef. The removal of any mention of Australia in the report was at the insistence of our Department of Environment, supposedly because it might hurt tourism.
The erasure was particularly heinous in light of a recent study that showed 35% of 84 reefs studied within the Great Barrier Reef suffered bleaching through the summer. We are now in the midst of a federal election campaign with both major parties throwing money at the reef but neither coming to grips with the major cause of coral bleaching, which is climate change. If they were serious about it, they would be addressing how to close down the coal industry and shift to renewable energy as a matter of urgency.
This will involve a massive change in the way our economies work. But if we don’t do it, it’s goodbye coral reefs everywhere.
Jenny Goldie
Michelago, New South Wales, Australia
• The Australian government’s intervention to have the nation erased from the UN climate report isn’t all bad. News reports of the ham-fisted intervention made in the name of protecting tourism have done more to draw Australian voters’ attention to the plight of the Great Barrier Reef than the report itself could ever have done.
Enough noise might at last have been generated to waken Australian politicians from their torpor on climate change. There is much more at stake than coral reefs.
Lawrie Bradly
Surrey Hills, Victoria, Australia
Shades of grey get lost
In her column on today’s growing populism, Natalie Nougayrède declares “mob rule” to have shut down Austria’s border for refugees (27 May), while the Guardian’s correspondents in Vienna, in the same issue, declared a knife-edged victory of the “right guy” for the presidency over the baddies: the anti-immigrant voters.
All polls suggest the most important motive for wanting the Green candidate for president had been to deselect a decayed political system. Unfortunately, such shades of grey in the political world, the investigation of which should be the benchmark for journalism, are too complex for simple categories.
Thomas Kolnberger
Vienna, Austria
• Natalie Nougayrède notes a growing chaos that domestic and international organisations seem unable to control as democracy is undermined by activism and threatened by right-wing populist politicians.
It has been suggested elsewhere that very unequal income distribution leads to political instability. I think we are witnessing inarticulate frustration with the takeover of democracy by banks and corporations and despair about environmental doom. In the United States, armed to the teeth, I fear that this could lead to real mob rule in a re-enactment of the French revolution.
As many governments have been captured by corporations, it does seem like there is nothing we can do through the ballot box. This is why activists are resorting to other means.
Is it possible to restore democracy and fairer income distribution and to start to address environmental concerns without descending into chaos? The answer of course is yes, just. But first we have to get real about the nature of the problem.
Edward Butterworth,
Victoria, British Columbia, Canada
Containing Islamic State
The excellent piece of journalism dealing with the search for and the attempt to murder Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi (3 June) has left me uneasy for both strategic and moral reasons.
Islamic State (Isis) is a relatively small problem to the world at large, which should be able to live with a small part of the Middle East controlled by Isis, just as it is able to live with North Korea and could live with the Soviet Union.
The attempt by many major countries to eliminate this group will remind the world of the worst periods of colonialism, where poor countries were “civilised” with the use of Gatling machine guns. Worse, it will make martyrs of Isis and its leaders at a time when the Middle East faces severe conflicts. The end of Isis would probably not mean the end of these conflicts, but more likely their spread.
We westerners should also remember that we do not have any moral claim to rule the world and we only do so by using force. The emir is a vicious dictator but he is unfortunately not the only one, and murdering him seems morally questionable. What about the innocent Muslims murdered by planes and drones? So much for morality.
François P Jeanjean
Ottawa, Canada
Middle East has many voices
I found the interview by Jonathan Freedland with Israeli author AB Yehoshua (13 May) and Yehoshua’s comments of great interest. Thank you for publishing this piece and promoting debate on this issue.
Though I have a few problems with Yehoshua’s views, we rarely get this depth of news coverage from our media in Australia on Palestine.
While it is useful to read the different Israeli perspectives on the conflict in Palestine, there is an almost total neglect in Australia and in the west generally of the Palestinian side of the story. It is important to encourage a diversity of opinion on this question.
Indeed, it is as if the outlook of one of the central participants in the conflict that has gone on for over 60 years is almost completely missing from the dialogue. In Australia, Britain, the US and elsewhere there are many eloquent Palestinian voices that are worthy of being given space in our media.
Palestinians deserve to be listened to, as there can be no real peace without attention to their point of view.
Steven Katsineris
Hurstbridge, Victoria, Australia
Briefly
• Alan Mitchum (Reply, 13 May) is entirely correct when he refers to the German government’s plans to subsidise electric-car purchases as amounting to a “nice coat of greenwash”. The absurdity of such programmes has been highlighted here in Ontario by the revelation that ultra-rich automobile fanciers are receiving taxpayer-funded rebates of more than $5,000 for purchasing hybrid-powered Porsche 918 Spyders.
Subsidies are also provided to eco-minded multimillionaires who want to save the planet by purchasing a BMW i8, Fisker Karma or Tesla Roadster.
David Josephy
Guelph, Ontario, Canada
• Polly Morland, in her essay on “inner grit” (3 June), assures us that “both courage and resilience can be learned”. She doesn’t mention, however, that these virtues can be also welcomed as two of the unexpected – nay, even enviable – gifts of old age.
Neurologist Oliver Sacks assured us when he reached 80 that having had “a long experience of life, not only of one’s own life, but others’, too” offers us “an enlargement of mental life and perspective”– not necessarily the diminishment that so many of us dread.
Richard Orlando
Westmount, Quebec, Canada
• The 27 May Discovery item about the first US penile transplant conjures up uncomfortable memories of the John and Lorena Bobbitt episode from 1993; while he slept, she cut off his penis. This was subsequently successfully reattached. In the case you reported, it was reassuring to read that the donor was “dead”.
Anthony Walter
Surrey, British Columbia, Canada
• I would like to hear from the remain campaign what their vision is of the UK in Europe over the next five, ten and 20 years. It won’t be the same as it is now, because the EU keeps changing.
If we remain and aren’t a part of “ever-closer union”, will the UK end up on the margins and without influence anyway?
Michael Johnston
East Kilbride, Scotland
